Community Market developer calls zoning rejection for Bloomfield site 'arbitrary'

The developer of a proposed mixed-use housing and grocery store site in Bloomfield is challenging the city’s zoning variance rejection that stalled the project last month.

O’Hara-based Echo Realty sought to increase the maximum height allowed on a site at the intersection of Liberty Avenue and the Bloomfield Bridge. Echo planned to build a 248-unit apartment building, a 28,000-square-foot grocery store, about 10,000 square feet for retail, and a public plaza facing Liberty Avenue.

The city’s Zoning Board of Adjustments denied the developer’s variance request for increased height and additional housing in November. The board said in its rejection that it does not have the authority to disregard council’s determinations of what the height and residential compatibility standards are to the order of magnitude proposed by Echo.

Currently, the site at 4401 Liberty Ave. houses the Community Market grocery store (formerly a ShurSave IGA) and a large surface parking lot that is typically only partially used. Echo’s proposal would include 25 of the housing units kept below market-rate and 318 parking spaces, some of them underground.

Echo is seeking a maximum height of 75 feet on sections of the building adjacent to Liberty Avenue as well as increased floor-area ratios for the development. Zoning for the Local Neighborhood Commercial district, where the site sits, allows for a current maximum height of 45 feet.

In its appeal filed Monday, Echo said the variance denial should be reversed, calling the decision “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, not supported by substantial evidence, and contrary to law.”

The denial stated that Echo “did not present sufficient evidence” that it was financially burdened enough if a variance wasn’t granted.

Echo wrote in the appeal refuting this claim, citing topographic and subsurface conditions that created construction and cost challenges unique to the property, as well as extra costs incurred by Bloomfield’s affordable housing requirements for large projects.

A request for comment from Echo was not returned.

In July, Echo vice president Phil Bishop said the project needed to exceed the maximum height under zoning to make the project economically feasible.

“The density for the plan is because of economics,” said Bishop in July. “Construction costs are getting higher, and when we put the numbers together, it doesn’t work without the density proposed.”

The proposal was supported by several community groups, including the Bloomfield Development Corporation.